8 ms·

Google has been killing all but the most widely known domains for a very long time. I've mentioned this repeatedly on ycombinator multiple times, but only peopl

Google has been killing all but the most widely known domains for a very long time. I've mentioned this repeatedly on ycombinator multiple times, but only people who have made their own website 15 years ago and tried to grow it know what I mean. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38923627#38933675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38923627#38933675 My recommendation is to start moving to some other closed platform that is not part of Google search like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube (yes I know Google owns it but its still not part of the search ecosystem). Tying your entire business to how high you rank on Google search is always going to eventually end up in disaster like this.

cogman10 3y ago
Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing instead because of how horrible google results are. On most searches, especially with my phone, the results are almost all sponsored and rarely what I'm actually looking for. Google search has gone from being one of the best to being ask jeeves at it's worst.
- getlawgdon 3y ago
  Same. Done with Google search. In addition to the results having become useless, it's Google's frenetic sprint away from the "don't be evil" ethos, which turns out to have only been in Incognito mode all along.
- nicbou 3y ago
  Even when the results are not sponsored, they're all generic answers from generic domains. I'm traveling at the moment and it's impossible to find anything written by someone in a 1000 km of the city I'm visiting. How to use public transit? What to see and do? How to get an airport transfer? Here are machine-generated answers from myairporttransfers.com and copywritten posts from cheapairteavels.com.
- i_love_cookies 3y ago
  [dead]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing I’ve been thrilled with Kagi. It’s the first time in over a decade that searching became fun again. The Quick Answer feature (Kagi’s LLM) filters through SEO better than Copilot, and the results are noticeably higher quality than ad-based engines. At $5/month for 300 searches, it’s cheap to try out (both for experience and if you actually notice the search limit).
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    Same, I finally gave up and tried it after Google just stopped being remotely useful, and DDG is just a reskinned bing. A week on Kagi and I signed up for an annual plan, and never looked back.
  - reddalo 3y ago
    The main problem with Kagi is that it's a paid service with no free tier. I get their reasons for this, and it totally makes sense -- but that's also a big problem for their growth. I know very few people who would pay for a search engine.
    - subpixel 3y ago
      I wouldn’t have paid for ad-free YouTube until the alternative became unbearable. So too with lousy search results.
    - bratwurst3000 3y ago
      I use kagi for better results few times a week and it’s always free.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > that's also a big problem for their growth I agree, but it’s a good early filter for conversion. The difference in quality, for me and everyone I’ve gifted a month to, is stark enough to make paying for search for the first time worth it. Given the absolute cost (for the cheapest tier, paid annually, less than $50) it’s a psychological hurdle more than a financial one for most Americans. Also, drawing those eyeballs from the ad-driven engines has a disproportionate effect on their marginal ad prices (in the long run). So if you need a sense of vengeance to get you over the hill, there you go.
- a_wild_dandan 3y ago
  I use an LLM for 80% of my queries now. Fighting Google isn't worthwhile, unless I need a trusted source.
  - stevage 3y ago
    What do you use?
    - bkandel 3y ago
      I use the Azure GPT-4 offering. It's not always 100% correct, but for technical questions in areas I'm not very familiar with, it's close enough. I can get much more done in a given amount of time than I would have been able to reading docs and SO. I know lots of people will point to examples where it's wrong, but I'd suggest trying it out yourself. If you're not intentionally trying to trip it up, it really works quite well.
  - web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
    How do you know when your LLM is bullshitting you
    - nicbou 3y ago
      The top 5 results (at least in the travel category) are written by copywriters across the ocean. It feels like a machine-generated average of the internet is not so bad.
    - bmurphy1976 3y ago
      You don't, but at least you have one answer you need to verify vs 100 listings of random garbage to wade through.
    - evilduck 3y ago
      How do you know when a Google result is bullshitting you, or if their pre-LLM AI summaries of results were bullshitting you?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Google search has become worthless for me. Ditto. My most recent example, I asked Google what the thickness of the Pixel 8 is including the camera visor, which was something not listed in the spec sheet since the official dimensions sneakily only list the thinnest point on the phone, not the thickest. And Google proudly and confidently gave me the answer at the top ... but it was the thickness without the visor, something I already knew since that's in the specs everywhere. I looked through the other results lower on the page and nada, no correct answer. So I asked Bing and it gave me the exact answer I was looking for at the top measured by some Android review site. And man is that phone a tick boy in that spot. You can probably put your weed in there. Sure, that's sample size=1 so probably not an accurate test, but still, to me it feels like Google sucks for anything but the easiest context searches where it works because it knows a lot of info about me like where I live and where I work so it can correctly deduct the context, but for other shit not related to me, it's like you're drowning in SEO junk.
  - politelemon 3y ago
    FWIW I just tried "thickness of the Pixel 8 including the camera visor", and got a snippet from Google: > The actual dimensions of the Google Pixel 8 are apparently 150.5 x 70.8 x 8.9mm, with the thickness rising to 12mm at the camera bar. And nothing on Bing.
    - mewpmewp2 3y ago
      In Bing I get nothing in the results, although I do get the written Copilot answer on the side: The Google Pixel 8, announced in October 2023, has the following dimensions: Height: 150.5 mm (5.93 inches) Width: 70.8 mm (2.79 inches) Depth: 8.9 mm (0.35 inches) However, if we include the thickness of the camera bump, the Pixel 8 measures approximately 12 mm3. The camera visor itself is notably thin compared to previous Pixel phones, but the overall thickness accounts for the camera bump and other components. In summary, the Pixel 8 is a sleek device with a slim profile, and its camera visor adds a touch of functionality without significantly increasing its overall thickness.
  - Solvency 3y ago
- gotbeans 3y ago
  I second this. The quality of google search has reached a point that's only good to search things that can't be bought.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    ... and uncontroversial. Searches for "coronavirus" seem to be hard-coded, or interfered with. I get pages and pages of Covid-19 results, but that's not what I searched for. I even get a wikipedia link to its covid-19 page, but no wikipedia link to its coronavirus page within the first several pages of results.
- plumeria 3y ago
  Something as basic as: "2,5 cm to mm" won't show up the unit conversion widget if it's not formatted as "2.5 cm to mm", at least for me. WolframAlpha also fails at this query. However, ChatGPT understands it and gives the right answer.
- fortran77 3y ago
  I use Bing, too. People are suprised when I recommend it, but for most general searches, it's quite a bit better.
- yazzku 3y ago
  In general, I find the same is true for all mainstream search engines, including DDG and Bing. You can't even search for things to buy anymore, ironically; it'll just dump you into Amazon or some "top 10" shitpost on CNN fake news or Forbes, much like the trash pit of websites shown in the header image of this article. Like others, I also find myself searching on Reddit or HN directly. What the point of a search engine is at that point, I don't know.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    It's infuriating that any qualifier you use is ignored. "Lightest laptop" will just return random lists of 10 laptops. No mention of weight.
- quatrefoil 3y ago
  > Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing instead because of how horrible google results are. Although Bing is generally OK at dealing with general queries, it's far, far worse at surfacing niche content, no? My non-commercial, hobby homepage fares reasonably OK on Google (although some queries are dominated by SEO spam). But on Bing, it ranks below a good number of spam websites, including ones that simply copied my content and serve it with ads...
- seventytwo 3y ago
  I subscribe to Kagi, and it’s great.
aniftythrifrty 3y ago
I am a small business owner who started their site and SEO and within three months I was beating multi-million dollar competition on the most important keyword google search terms for our market and industry. I did this with no budget, no adspend, just basic SEO and good keyword research. It's totally possible for mom and pop websites to get traction with google, even easy. You just have to be halfway decent at SEO.
- dazc 3y ago
  I would guess you're working in a niche that has not been targeted by the big media sites alluded to here? Being halfway decent at SEO will come to nothing when you have 20 or so competing sites that can rank overnight for anything.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  > It's totally possible for mom and pop websites to get traction with google, even easy. You just have to be halfway decent at SEO. If this is really true, then you should be running your own SEO consulting business. You would undoubtedly make much more money than your existing (presumably not SEO consulting), small business Comments like this are similar to people (ahem, Internet randos) talking about their investment portfolio returns, where they wildly exceed the very best professionally managed hedge funds. I always say: "If you are so good, why don't you run your own hedge fund? It will easy to get funding." <<crickets>>
  - aniftythrifrty 3y ago
    Knowledge of my SEO prowess comes only recently. I have hung my shingle as a proven SEO expert so we will see. If anyone wants to hire me please let me know. I come with proven metrics.
- whatamidoingyo 3y ago
  Same. Numerous 1st page top results, and even snippets. Honestly no idea how... I do know SEO basics, but didn't know I knew them well enough for this. Within a year I had the first result for a very, very popular search term. Granted it was a lot of hard work (18 hour days, sometimes).
granzymes 3y ago
Read past the provocative title, and Google actually seems to be doing the right things here. They cracked down on product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product in 2021, and the article says big media companies (presumably with lower quality review content) suffered as a result. But then those media companies found a loophole with "The Best X" lists that weren't subject to the 2021 Products Review Update changes, which lets them continue spamming affiliate links while avoiding the new requirements. So now independent sites with actual reviews are in a holding pattern for these search terms, waiting for Google to bring the hammer down again on sites that are evading its quality metrics. This article is pretty clearly an open letter trying to bring attention to this issue. If the team at Google working on ranking for product reviews is reading this, I hope you have another update in the works to close this loophole. H1 planning just wrapped up! -- Edit: The title on HN has changed to be less click-baity. The original title was "How Google is killing independent sites like ours". Title aside, the article is quite excellent and does a great job of explaining the product review niche of SEO. Kudos to the authors.
- codexon 3y ago
  I still believe the original title is warranted. The fact that Google has to manually step in to intervene or else the big domains get all the top rankings tells you that they are very heavily biased towards big media domains.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    does it? I would happily believe that Google is corrupt in this manner, but the reason big domains have the advantage here is because they can afford to pay teams of people with the express purpose of gaming the system. this is true in all industries, everywhere, and it can only be fixed with society-wide change, which, short of a world war (or, more likely, two), isn't going to happen
    - codexon 3y ago
      It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
The same issues you have with google search engine optimization are present in every other closed platform too. Welcome to the attention economy, you better learn how to go viral.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cogman10 3y ago

Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing instead because of how horrible google results are. On most searches, especially with my phone, the results are almost all sponsored and rarely what I'm actually looking for. Google search has gone from being one of the best to being ask jeeves at it's worst.

getlawgdon 3y ago
Same. Done with Google search. In addition to the results having become useless, it's Google's frenetic sprint away from the "don't be evil" ethos, which turns out to have only been in Incognito mode all along.
nicbou 3y ago
Even when the results are not sponsored, they're all generic answers from generic domains. I'm traveling at the moment and it's impossible to find anything written by someone in a 1000 km of the city I'm visiting. How to use public transit? What to see and do? How to get an airport transfer? Here are machine-generated answers from myairporttransfers.com and copywritten posts from cheapairteavels.com.
i_love_cookies 3y ago
[dead]
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing I’ve been thrilled with Kagi. It’s the first time in over a decade that searching became fun again. The Quick Answer feature (Kagi’s LLM) filters through SEO better than Copilot, and the results are noticeably higher quality than ad-based engines. At $5/month for 300 searches, it’s cheap to try out (both for experience and if you actually notice the search limit).
- EA-3167 3y ago
  Same, I finally gave up and tried it after Google just stopped being remotely useful, and DDG is just a reskinned bing. A week on Kagi and I signed up for an annual plan, and never looked back.
- reddalo 3y ago
  The main problem with Kagi is that it's a paid service with no free tier. I get their reasons for this, and it totally makes sense -- but that's also a big problem for their growth. I know very few people who would pay for a search engine.
  - subpixel 3y ago
    I wouldn’t have paid for ad-free YouTube until the alternative became unbearable. So too with lousy search results.
  - bratwurst3000 3y ago
    I use kagi for better results few times a week and it’s always free.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > that's also a big problem for their growth I agree, but it’s a good early filter for conversion. The difference in quality, for me and everyone I’ve gifted a month to, is stark enough to make paying for search for the first time worth it. Given the absolute cost (for the cheapest tier, paid annually, less than $50) it’s a psychological hurdle more than a financial one for most Americans. Also, drawing those eyeballs from the ad-driven engines has a disproportionate effect on their marginal ad prices (in the long run). So if you need a sense of vengeance to get you over the hill, there you go.
a_wild_dandan 3y ago
I use an LLM for 80% of my queries now. Fighting Google isn't worthwhile, unless I need a trusted source.
- stevage 3y ago
  What do you use?
  - bkandel 3y ago
    I use the Azure GPT-4 offering. It's not always 100% correct, but for technical questions in areas I'm not very familiar with, it's close enough. I can get much more done in a given amount of time than I would have been able to reading docs and SO. I know lots of people will point to examples where it's wrong, but I'd suggest trying it out yourself. If you're not intentionally trying to trip it up, it really works quite well.
- web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
  How do you know when your LLM is bullshitting you
  - nicbou 3y ago
    The top 5 results (at least in the travel category) are written by copywriters across the ocean. It feels like a machine-generated average of the internet is not so bad.
  - bmurphy1976 3y ago
    You don't, but at least you have one answer you need to verify vs 100 listings of random garbage to wade through.
  - evilduck 3y ago
    How do you know when a Google result is bullshitting you, or if their pre-LLM AI summaries of results were bullshitting you?
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Google search has become worthless for me. Ditto. My most recent example, I asked Google what the thickness of the Pixel 8 is including the camera visor, which was something not listed in the spec sheet since the official dimensions sneakily only list the thinnest point on the phone, not the thickest. And Google proudly and confidently gave me the answer at the top ... but it was the thickness without the visor, something I already knew since that's in the specs everywhere. I looked through the other results lower on the page and nada, no correct answer. So I asked Bing and it gave me the exact answer I was looking for at the top measured by some Android review site. And man is that phone a tick boy in that spot. You can probably put your weed in there. Sure, that's sample size=1 so probably not an accurate test, but still, to me it feels like Google sucks for anything but the easiest context searches where it works because it knows a lot of info about me like where I live and where I work so it can correctly deduct the context, but for other shit not related to me, it's like you're drowning in SEO junk.
- politelemon 3y ago
  FWIW I just tried "thickness of the Pixel 8 including the camera visor", and got a snippet from Google: > The actual dimensions of the Google Pixel 8 are apparently 150.5 x 70.8 x 8.9mm, with the thickness rising to 12mm at the camera bar. And nothing on Bing.
  - mewpmewp2 3y ago
    In Bing I get nothing in the results, although I do get the written Copilot answer on the side: The Google Pixel 8, announced in October 2023, has the following dimensions: Height: 150.5 mm (5.93 inches) Width: 70.8 mm (2.79 inches) Depth: 8.9 mm (0.35 inches) However, if we include the thickness of the camera bump, the Pixel 8 measures approximately 12 mm3. The camera visor itself is notably thin compared to previous Pixel phones, but the overall thickness accounts for the camera bump and other components. In summary, the Pixel 8 is a sleek device with a slim profile, and its camera visor adds a touch of functionality without significantly increasing its overall thickness.
- Solvency 3y ago
gotbeans 3y ago
I second this. The quality of google search has reached a point that's only good to search things that can't be bought.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  ... and uncontroversial. Searches for "coronavirus" seem to be hard-coded, or interfered with. I get pages and pages of Covid-19 results, but that's not what I searched for. I even get a wikipedia link to its covid-19 page, but no wikipedia link to its coronavirus page within the first several pages of results.
plumeria 3y ago
Something as basic as: "2,5 cm to mm" won't show up the unit conversion widget if it's not formatted as "2.5 cm to mm", at least for me. WolframAlpha also fails at this query. However, ChatGPT understands it and gives the right answer.
fortran77 3y ago
I use Bing, too. People are suprised when I recommend it, but for most general searches, it's quite a bit better.
yazzku 3y ago
In general, I find the same is true for all mainstream search engines, including DDG and Bing. You can't even search for things to buy anymore, ironically; it'll just dump you into Amazon or some "top 10" shitpost on CNN fake news or Forbes, much like the trash pit of websites shown in the header image of this article. Like others, I also find myself searching on Reddit or HN directly. What the point of a search engine is at that point, I don't know.
- nicbou 3y ago
  It's infuriating that any qualifier you use is ignored. "Lightest laptop" will just return random lists of 10 laptops. No mention of weight.
quatrefoil 3y ago
> Google search has become worthless for me. I use bing instead because of how horrible google results are. Although Bing is generally OK at dealing with general queries, it's far, far worse at surfacing niche content, no? My non-commercial, hobby homepage fares reasonably OK on Google (although some queries are dominated by SEO spam). But on Bing, it ranks below a good number of spam websites, including ones that simply copied my content and serve it with ads...
seventytwo 3y ago
I subscribe to Kagi, and it’s great.

aniftythrifrty 3y ago

I am a small business owner who started their site and SEO and within three months I was beating multi-million dollar competition on the most important keyword google search terms for our market and industry. I did this with no budget, no adspend, just basic SEO and good keyword research. It's totally possible for mom and pop websites to get traction with google, even easy. You just have to be halfway decent at SEO.

dazc 3y ago
I would guess you're working in a niche that has not been targeted by the big media sites alluded to here? Being halfway decent at SEO will come to nothing when you have 20 or so competing sites that can rank overnight for anything.
throwaway2037 3y ago
> It's totally possible for mom and pop websites to get traction with google, even easy. You just have to be halfway decent at SEO. If this is really true, then you should be running your own SEO consulting business. You would undoubtedly make much more money than your existing (presumably not SEO consulting), small business Comments like this are similar to people (ahem, Internet randos) talking about their investment portfolio returns, where they wildly exceed the very best professionally managed hedge funds. I always say: "If you are so good, why don't you run your own hedge fund? It will easy to get funding." <<crickets>>
- aniftythrifrty 3y ago
  Knowledge of my SEO prowess comes only recently. I have hung my shingle as a proven SEO expert so we will see. If anyone wants to hire me please let me know. I come with proven metrics.
whatamidoingyo 3y ago
Same. Numerous 1st page top results, and even snippets. Honestly no idea how... I do know SEO basics, but didn't know I knew them well enough for this. Within a year I had the first result for a very, very popular search term. Granted it was a lot of hard work (18 hour days, sometimes).

granzymes 3y ago

Read past the provocative title, and Google actually seems to be doing the right things here. They cracked down on product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product in 2021, and the article says big media companies (presumably with lower quality review content) suffered as a result. But then those media companies found a loophole with "The Best X" lists that weren't subject to the 2021 Products Review Update changes, which lets them continue spamming affiliate links while avoiding the new requirements. So now independent sites with actual reviews are in a holding pattern for these search terms, waiting for Google to bring the hammer down again on sites that are evading its quality metrics. This article is pretty clearly an open letter trying to bring attention to this issue. If the team at Google working on ranking for product reviews is reading this, I hope you have another update in the works to close this loophole. H1 planning just wrapped up! -- Edit: The title on HN has changed to be less click-baity. The original title was "How Google is killing independent sites like ours". Title aside, the article is quite excellent and does a great job of explaining the product review niche of SEO. Kudos to the authors.

codexon 3y ago
I still believe the original title is warranted. The fact that Google has to manually step in to intervene or else the big domains get all the top rankings tells you that they are very heavily biased towards big media domains.
- permo-w 3y ago
  does it? I would happily believe that Google is corrupt in this manner, but the reason big domains have the advantage here is because they can afford to pay teams of people with the express purpose of gaming the system. this is true in all industries, everywhere, and it can only be fixed with society-wide change, which, short of a world war (or, more likely, two), isn't going to happen
  - codexon 3y ago
    It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO.

kjkjadksj 3y ago

The same issues you have with google search engine optimization are present in every other closed platform too. Welcome to the attention economy, you better learn how to go viral.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]